With the release of the Sex and the City movie only one month away, I've been thinking a lot about the cultural significance of the show that so many women seem to think they relate to. While I always liked it, I still hated so many aspects about it, particularly Carrie. I never connected with her character, nor would I ever want to. But there were instances when watching the series that I'd recognize story lines that were spot on. Case in point: That time that Miranda made a chocolate cake and couldn't stop eating it so she threw it out, but then continued eating it out of her garbage the next day. Lately, I've been finding that my trash can has been feeding me way more than my fridge.

This is something I've been doing for a while. At first it started in college, when I was super poor and would buy $.99 bags of party mix for a meal, and then eat all the good stuff, then toss the bag with the pretzels in it. Later on, I'd still be hungry, so I'd resort to fishing the bag out of the trash to eat the pretzels. As the years progressed, I've tried to use my trash can as a form of portion control or something, particularly when drunk. This past Valentine's Day, I got pretty wasted and decided to buy a cheese steak and cheese fries after leaving the bar at 2 AM. I got home, ate half the sandwich, felt disgusted with myself, and then threw it out. (I polished off the fries before I even got out of the cab.) In the morning, I woke up hungover and in the mood for something greasy. I went over to the garbage, found the other half of my sandwich and ate it, despite the fact that an empty packet of wet dog food was right next to it. More recently, I've dined on disposed buffalo wings.

I've talked to some of the other Jezebels about this and I know for a fact that I'm not the only one. It's slightly fucked up, because I know that it's rooted in an impulsive way to try to restrict my intake of the fattening food I love so much, and a compulsive need to actually finish it the next day. (There's also a big element of being just too lazy to drag my ass down and back up the four flights to actually buy new junk food at the deli.) But you know, it's still not one of the stupidest things we've ever done to lose weight.